Perianne is the CEO of Boring & Company, LLC, a financial services technology consulting firm. She served as an economic analyst in network broadcast news. Prior Perianne was a legislative analyst on Capitol Hill advising on economic, tax, and health care policy. She graduated with a degree in business and economics from the University of Florida. As a free market advocate, she also writes about macroeconomics and consumer finance.

The Boring Bitcoin Report: Week Of June 16

This week was a rather positive one for bitcoin. Google, Yahoo, and Expedia are among the companies that began implementing a bitcoin strategy. While the price of bitcoin has decreased about 10 percent since last Sunday, the decrease is mostly speculative news out of the US Marshals Service to auction off the government’s holdings of bitcoin.

The US Marshals Service is auctioning off 29,656 bitcoins that the government seized from Silk Road, the busted online drug bazaar. Bidder registration closes on Monday, June 23 and the auction will take place on Friday, June 27.

Since this announcement the price of bitcoin has decreased with speculators believing the sale will oversaturate the market with bitcoin. However, 3,600 new bitcoins are mined into the Bitcoin economy every day and the exchange trading volume is extremely volatile, ranging from $1 million to $30 million worth of bitcoin per day.

This will likely be the most closely watched bitcoin sale in history, further legitimatizing bitcoin as a legal asset. The government owns about 144,336 (over $100 million) of seized bitcoins. After this auction Uncle Sam will still hold a large position in the market.

1/Announcement: @BitcoinTrust and SecondMarket’s bitcoin trading desk will be forming a syndicate to bid in US Marshals bitcoin auction…

Just as the US Internal Revenue Service defines bitcoin as property, the Isle of Man is calling bitcoin property “rather than currency” and plans to add digital currency language in anti-money laundering bills. “Our stance is intended to welcome those who can meet the necessary standards while also preserving the Island’s good reputation as a financial center.” – Peter Greenhill, Department of Economic Development Director of E-Business Development While the Isle of Man is bringing legitimacy to bitcoin by regulating the industry, it would be more encouraging if they would give digital currencies their own set of rules and guidelines instead of trying to fit them into the existing framework.

Now that Coinbase’s API is being used on Google, anyone who uses Google can see a graph of current and past bitcoin values compared to U.S. dollars. They can also use Google’s currency converter to determine how many dollars equal how many bitcoin, and vice versa.”

The move shows bitcoin’s growing demand among the investment community.

The Electronic Payments Association is the organization that oversees ACH payments and represents over 10,000 financial institutions. Ripple vertically integrates the ACH process and is targeting financial institutions to merge the existing financial system with their payment protocol. Joining NACHA will give Ripple a lot of credibility amongst the established institutions. Ripple Labs is backed by Core Innovation Capital, a fund that is dedicated to investing in companies that serve under-banked consumers in the United States. Pantera Files Form D With SEC

Pantera’s Bitcoin Fund, Ltd. already has over $96 million invested from 45 accredited investors. If approved Pantera would be able to sell securities without having to register the offering with the SEC. Such a move is more of a procedural motion to be able to bring bitcoin investing options to the public.

Over the past couple of weeks GHash.IO has come close to having 51 percent of the bitcoin network hashing rate. Miners fearing the possibility of the infamous 51 percent attack, took to reddit and other social network sites. Eventually BitFury, a mining hardware partner of GHash.IO, responded to their cries and removed a portion of their hashing power off the pool. It is now sitting at 42 percent of the network’s hashing power. Andreas Antonopoulos, a bitcoin security expert, addressed the public’s concerns and said a 51 percent attack is more hype than reality. If a 51 percent attacker tried to compromise the bitcoin protocol, the community would be able to see what they were doing and the core developers have the tools to interfere.

I do not worry about a 51% attack on bitcoin. It is neither likely, nor effective and it completely contravenes the incentives of miners.

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